Since I did some IM clean up a few years ago I only used Skype for chat and presence awarness in my private life. I killed MSN, AOL, Yahoo. In my business life my IM tool remains Lotus Sametime and is becoming more and more important with telephony integration.

Google Talk becomes more and more important since I started using Gmail years ago. Since a few days Gmail offers the option to sign in to your AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) account to chat with your AIM buddies from Gmail. I tried to remember my old password, signed in and voila: Some of my old contacts are back. So maybe I will be available in that network again. As we start to roll out the Lotus Sametime Gateway in our company I will be available there too.

BTW: AIM in Gmail is not a Google Talk and AIM federation; it’s the ability to sign in to your AIM messaging account from Gmail. Gmail uses Open AIM to provide this feature.